Or rather, not quite -- I think medieval christian philosophers asked the question, and proposed various answers.
IIRC, the answers they proposed boil down to a number of fairly simple positions:
a) There is justice in this world, really. b) There will be justice in the afterlife. c) God's reasons are not for us to know. d) Free will. e) A universe containing human beings has to work in ways that allow the existence of human beings, which necessitates the existence of the other things in the universe that are consequences of that, including sickness, natural disasters, &c.
I am inclined to reject the first three pretty much a priori, as the first seems self-evidently false and the other two dodge the question. The latter two really seem to be fudging on the omniscience and omnipotence criteria.
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Date: 2008-05-12 05:45 pm (UTC)Or rather, not quite -- I think medieval christian philosophers asked the question, and proposed various answers.
IIRC, the answers they proposed boil down to a number of fairly simple positions:
a) There is justice in this world, really.
b) There will be justice in the afterlife.
c) God's reasons are not for us to know.
d) Free will.
e) A universe containing human beings has to work in ways that allow the existence of human beings, which necessitates the existence of the other things in the universe that are consequences of that, including sickness, natural disasters, &c.
I am inclined to reject the first three pretty much a priori, as the first seems self-evidently false and the other two dodge the question. The latter two really seem to be fudging on the omniscience and omnipotence criteria.